From:                                                      Kelvin Sung [KSung@uwb.edu]

Sent:                                                        Sunday, September 28, 2008 6:18 PM

To:                                                            John Nordlinger

Cc:                                                            Kelvin Sung

Subject:                                                  RE: Sep 2008: Progress Report on: XNA CS1-Lab Workbook

 

Re: XNA CS1-Lab Workbook: September 2008 Progress Report

 

In September we worked on two major areas of the project: refinement and distribution:

 

  1. Work book refinement: As described in the progress report from August, we are about 75% done with the workbook initial draft. At this point, it is essential to ensure these materials are consistent, coherent, and present an overall framework for building knowledge. We have worked on refining and revising these materials.

 

  1. Distribution:  the next step in the project is to begin releasing our materials on-line and to enable independent faculty in reviewing the materials. Towards this end, we have made tremendous progress:
    1. Web-site: we have completely revised the XNA Game-Themed Introductory Programming Project web-site. We have integrated php-scripting to support dynamic rendering of html pages, and to support easy modification in the future. We have build an over-arching theme encompassing the XGA (XNA Game-themed Assignment) and XGC1 (XNA Game-themed Cs1) projects. Please refer to: (http://depts.washington.edu/cmmr/Research/XNA_Games/index.php?code=proj ) for the details.
    2. Release of XGC1: The first pre-release of XGC1 is finally out on the web. We have spend considerable amount of time customizing the release tool from the XGA-phase of the project. While in XGA, we have to work with 7 assignments where each assignment includes 4-6 XNA projects, in the current XGC1 project, we current have about 40-60 XNA projects, each with independent explanation html page. To ensure all project compiles properly, and to ensure the look and feel of the html explanation pages are consistent, we have put in considerable efforts in stream-lining the release procedure with many new customized tools. The good news is, with the first pre-release the development with these tools are about finished and  all tools are operational.

 

  1. New Development:
    1. Collaboration with Reed Stevens: we are proceeding with the collaboration with Reed in studying the effectiveness of the XGC1 materials. We are in the process of applying for human subject approval, on-track for in-classroom study in Spring 2009. The timing would be perfect for SIGCSE paper writing next Summer.
    2. Workshop in Mexico: Thanks to Kent’s introduction, Kelvin is in touch with Ruben Mugartegui Paulin, we are finalizing a possible workshop based on the materials from XGC1 in early next year with potential follow-up workshops later next year.

 

  1. CCSC-NW Workshop: Kelvin and Mike are deep in preparation for the up-coming CCSC-NW workshop on working with XGA materials. This workshop differs from our previous ones in that we will build in time for participants to design their own assignments. This will be a template for our SIGCSE workshop (if accepted).

 

  1. Next: Well, school has just begun. It is expected we will be (if just slightly) distracted from this project to pay attention to our classroom and students. Other than that, we are making great progress.